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Track the jobs of the future in the age of the algorithm

Rethinking the workforce of the future

For the 160 million people in the U.S. labor force, the digital revolution is transforming work as we know it. Now, Cognizant has developed a framework to track the demand for the jobs of the future.

To benchmark the emergence of new jobs, we have created the Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index? (CJoF Index). Our quarterly index explores the trends and patterns of 50 jobs. Developed from our own Center for the Future of Work reports, and supported by economic research firm ESI Thoughtlab, the CJoF Index answers key questions like:

Which jobs, in which industries, are growing faster than others?

Which jobs are shrinking or shifting to other occupations or overseas?

Are job market geographic patterns emerging?

We hope the CJoF Index helps you gain insight into tomorrow’s job market—and what's required for employees and employers to remain competitive.

Cognizant’s Jobs of the Future Index finishes 2019 with strong growth across all job families

2019 was a booming year for the US labor market: unemployment hit a 50-year low, employers continued to add more jobs faster than job seekers could fill them, and wage growth—while still sluggish—is at its strongest level within the current economic expansion. Reflecting the robust overall labor market, the Cognizant Jobs of the Future (CJoF) Index, which tracks quarterly postings for digitally enabled jobs, registered one of the highest quarterly and year-over-year growth rates since the start of the index in the fourth quarter of 2016. The strong and steady growth of the CJoF Index serves as another indicator of the current tight state of the labor market, where the unemployment rate remains low (3.5 percent) and additional people continue to return to the labor force. The index also provides a helpful context to understand the changing nature of work, as more jobs traditionally not associated with technology, like home health aides and behavioral therapists, now require some digitally enabled skills.

The CJoF Index tracks demand for 50 digitally enabled jobs of the future identified by Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work, capturing the quarterly fluctuations in postings for these jobs. In the fourth quarter of 2019, the CJoF Index rose by a strong 30.7 percent over the year, from an index figure of 1.45 in Q4 2018 to 1.89 in Q4 2019. The fourth quarter’s year-on-year growth nearly matched the 31.6 percent recorded in the CJoF Index in Q1 2019, bookending 2019 with two high growth rates at the start and end of the year.

The CJoF Index also posted firm quarterly growth, with the overall index increasing 14.3 percent, from 1.65 in Q3 to 1.89 in Q4. This is the fastest quarterly growth for the index since Q2 of 2018. This quarter is also the second quarter in a row in which the CJoF Index growth surpassed the All Burning Glass Jobs Index, showing that these 50 digitally enabled jobs are outpacing the postings growth of all jobs available in the labor market.

In addition to total job openings, the CJoF Index monitors trends in eight families of jobs of the future, all of which saw over-the-year and quarterly growth in Q4 2019. These eight families are Algorithms, Automation and AI; Customer Experience; Environment; Fitness and Wellness; Healthcare; Legal and Financial Services; Transport; and Work Culture. Even after moderate to strong expansion throughout the year, the fourth quarter saw continued robust growth in all job families compared with the prior quarter. The Fitness and Wellness job family, after experiencing a slight quarterly decline in Q3 2019, registered the highest quarterly growth this quarter and is now the job family with the highest index score, at 5.86.

The Fitness and Wellness family, thanks to especially strong growth in the Caregiver/Personal Care Aide (+526 percent) and Home Health Aide (+449 percent) job postings, recorded a dramatic year-over-year growth rate of 253 percent. This considerable growth reflects the overall labor market demand for these types of jobs as the population of the US continues to age, requiring more assistance to accomplish tasks of daily living. These sorts of services are becoming more popular for older Americans because having a personal care or home health aide allows people to remain relatively independent in their homes for longer periods, without having to relocate to a nursing home or similar facility. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that both of these jobs will continue to grow significantly faster than all other occupations over the next decade.

As the number of jobs related to fitness and wellness continue to expand, many will require familiarity with the latest digital technology innovations in the field, including remote monitoring and improvements to digital interoperability. This will allow caregivers and related agencies to obtain and maintain easily accessible information on the different needs of the people using their services.

The two other occupations in this family, Family/Behavioral Therapists (+37 percent) and the proxy job Fitness Commitment Counselor (+23 percent), also saw firm albeit less dynamic year-over-year growth compared with the rest of the family. Yet despite the dramatic growth in postings in the Fitness and Wellness family overall this quarter, it only represents 0.8 percent of the overall CJoF Index, or slightly more than 3,800 total postings compared with the total CJoF Index postings count of 496,000. The Algorithms, Automation, and AI (AAA) family retains the largest share of the index.

Similar to the jobs in the Fitness and Wellness family, Healthcare jobs continue to experience a steady and consistent rise in the number of postings. Trends in healthcare mirror similar trends to the Home Health Aide and Caregiver/Personal Care Aides as the demand for various healthcare services continue to increase in line with the aging of the population. Since the beginning of 2018, the healthcare sector has maintained its position as the largest source of employment in the US, surpassing the retail sector. According to Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), the healthcare sector has also managed to weather the past three recessions without shedding the number of employees in the industry.

This sustained and hardy growth illustrates that the demand for digitally enabled skills continues to expand as technology becomes a more important part of our lives. The fastest growing job families in Q4 were the following:

Fitness and Wellness (+253 percent)

Healthcare (+49 percent)

Transport (+42 percent)

The families with strong but more moderate growth were:

Legal and Financial Services (+35 percent)

AAA (+31 percent)

Work Culture (+27 percent)

Only two families registered growth below 20 percent over the year:

Environmental (+19 percent)

Customer Experience (+16 percent)

Which jobs grew the most over the year?

Of the top ten fastest growing jobs, the top two were in the Fitness and Wellness Family (Caregiver/Personal Care Aide and Home Health Aide), four were in the Healthcare family (Physician, Health Information Manager/Director, Genetic Counselor, and Biomedical Equipment Technician), and the remaining four were in the Work Culture, Environmental, Legal and Financial Services, or Transport families. Despite representing a majority of the index, the AAA family in Q4 did not have a single job category in the top ten fast growing jobs. The fastest AAA family job was Technology Consultant at 54 percent, following several quarters of consecutive decline.

The Work Culture and Environmental families were the only job families containing a job that recorded a decline in year-over-year postings. In Work Culture, the Industrial-Organizational Psychologist postings declined by nearly 26 percent. Alternative Energy Managers, in the Environmental family, also declined by 19 percent year-over-year.

The fastest growing jobs over the year in Q4 of 2019 in the CJoF Index were:

Caregiver / Personal Care Aide (+526 percent)

Home Health Aide (+449 percent)

Career Counselor (+277 percent)

Physician (+146 percent)

Solar Installer (+78 percent)

Jobs that posted the slowest percent increases over the year in the CJoF Index in Q4 2019 were:

Biomedical Engineer (+7 percent)

Surveillance Officer/Investigator (+7 percent)

AR Journey Builder (+5 percent)

Attorney (+4 percent)

Social Media Strategist / Specialist (+3 percent)

Only two jobs posted negative growth over the year in Q4 2019:

Industrial-Organizational Psychologist (-26 percent)

Alternative Energy Manager (-19 percent)

While percent change shows the momentum growth in jobs, the numeric increase in jobs is also a key indicator of the overall demand for these new skill sets. On this measure, Software Developers/Engineers remained the occupation with the largest number of job postings in the CJoF Index, with another quarter of impressive additional over-the-year postings at nearly 70,000 new postings since Q4 of 2018. This increase was followed by several other AAA family jobs, including Cyber/Information Security Engineer/Analyst (+6,482 openings), Business Intelligence Architect/Developer (+6,482 openings), and two proxy jobs (also part of the AAA family): Cyber Calamity Forecasters (+6,082 openings) and Master of Edge Computing (+2,654 openings). While these job categories did not chalk up the fastest growth in percentage terms, the large numeric increases underscore the ongoing search among employers for technical talent as they accelerate their data analytics capabilities.

All of the other proxy jobs landed in the bottom half of the index in numeric growth this quarter, with Tidewater Architect (+193 openings), AR Journey Builder (+117 openings), and Fitness Commitment Counselor (+101 openings) adding less than 200 jobs over the past year.

CJoF Index registers over-the-quarter growth of 14 percent

Overall, the CJoF Index posted a relatively strong and sustained quarterly increase (+14 percent), rising from 1.65 in Q3 2019 to 1.89 in Q4 2019. The CJoF Index outperformed the All Burning Glass Jobs Index (+13 percent) for the second quarter in a row, increasing from 1.46 in Q2 2019. The Proxy Job Index also showed continued growth in quarter-on-quarter terms, with an increase of approximately 13 percent; this was especially robust compared with the last quarter, when it increased by a modest 5 percent. The Proxy Job Index rose from 1.45 in Q3 to 1.64 in Q4. For the past several quarters, the Proxy Job Index and the All Burning Glass Index have slowly converged as the Proxy Jobs became more representative of actual jobs in the labor market.

All of the job families experienced quarter-on-quarter increases. The last time all of the families had a simultaneous quarterly increase was in Q2 of 2018. The Fitness and Wellness family had the highest percent growth ever captured by the Index at +169 percent, while the AAA family had the highest numerical change in job postings at nearly 49,000 new job postings this quarter.

After Fitness and Wellness, the Legal and Financial Services family realized the largest quarterly gain in job postings in Q4 (+50 percent), followed by the Transport family (+49 percent). The Customer Experience (+16 percent), Healthcare (+15 percent),andAAA(+13 percent) families all had more moderate growth, while only two families, Environmental (+6 percent) and Work Culture (+2 percent), registered growth of less than 10 percent.

Announcing the Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index

The digital revolution is changing the course of the future of work for the 160 million people in today’s US labor force. New technologies and tools are transforming the workplace, eliminating some jobs, reinventing others, and creating new jobs of the future. But these dramatic shifts are also making it more difficult to identify which jobs will grow in the future and what these new roles will entail. Traditional ways of thinking about job demand are becoming less effective. We need new ways to analyze workforce trends and patterns to both companies and job seekers prepare for the future. The Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index will allow us to test and/or prove our hypotheses about what the jobs of the future will look like, how they are evolving, and what will be required of employees and employers alike.

That is why we created the Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index. This ground-breaking Index explores the trends and patterns in a set of fifty jobs—45 actual or “real” jobs, along with 5 “proxy” jobs developed from Cognizant’s 21 Jobs of the Future and the 21 More Jobs of the Future. With analytical support from economists at ESI Thoughtlab, an economic research firm, we selected jobs that shared several characteristics:

First, they are occupations that have been or are expected to grow, particularly when we take into consideration rising digitization of work and the workplace, such as software or mobile app developers.

Second, they are occupations that are integral to industries that are expected to grow or transform in the coming decades. These occupations could include newly defined or traditional jobs in industries that are being changed by technology or expanding rapidly to meet societal needs.

Finally, we applied a digital filter to these jobs. Using the proprietary Burning Glass database of job openings, we can search for and identify jobs that require digital technology skills on top of traditional skills requirements—meaning that the job description for the posting mentions or requires technological capabilities as a requirement for employment. That allows us to look at jobs that are being enhanced or transformed to reflect the digital revolution in the workplace, and to track trends in those specific jobs. In future posts, we will compare some of those more traditional jobs with their counterpart digital version, to see if differences in demand are emerging.

Tracking Demand for Jobs of the Future

With all of that as the backdrop, the Index is a real-time demand tracking instrument – allowing us to identify shifts and changes in employer demand for these jobs. The 50 jobs we are tracking in the CJoF Index represent about 5% of the total jobs tracked by Burning Glass in the most recent quarter. What we will be looking for as we track these jobs over future quarters is how the Index is changing.

Which jobs are growing faster than the other jobs in the Index?

Which job families—our 8 groups of jobs with common characteristics such as industry sector or skills requirements—are growing faster than either the Index or the overall Burning Glass database?

Are some jobs shrinking, meaning that either those jobs are shrinking or perhaps that those jobs are shifting to either other occupations or even overseas?

Are there geographic location patterns, such as more of certain occupations in urban areas versus rural areas?

The index is not about predicting the future. Rather, it is a tool that allows us to look at trends like one we see in this first edition, where jobs in the “Work Culture” family have grown by 65% since the starting point of the Index, the 2nd fastest growth rate for any of our families. That trend leads us naturally to some questions. Why are occupations like Training and Development Specialist, I/O Psychologist and Career Counselor growing faster than seemingly more tech-oriented occupations? Why might there be more demand for technically oriented career counselors? Is the growth due to the rise of online job postings, or is it the need for career counselors to be well-versed in the technologies and new jobs that they are connecting and training their clients for? What we may be seeing is that for companies with changing expectations and ways in which employees are expected to work, having tech savvy career counselors and I/O psychologists can be an investment in the future of their workplace. And it may sound counterintuitive, but in a world of more pervasive technology, activities that humans do well will become even more important. In the future, work will change but won’t go. Once you answer the question of what to do when machines do everything, the next logical question is: “OK, what exactly are the numerous jobs that will come to pass?

What’s Next

So, join us as we begin this journey through the Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index. Every quarter we will update the index and identify highlights and interesting insights from the data we are seeing. In addition, we encourage you to explore our interactive dashboard—there you can look at the overall index, segments of the index like our eight job families, or even look more closely at the trends within any one of the jobs included in the index. We hope the Index is useful as you try to understand what is going on in the job market and what you as a future employee or employer need to do to remain competitive. We look forward to engaging you in a conversation about the jobs of the future and hearing your viewpoints on what is happening and why.

The Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index

The rapid rise of technology is causing US companies to rethink jobs for the future of work. To benchmark these emerging jobs, we have created the Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index? (CJoF Index). This quarterly index measures the change in demand for a set of 50 jobs of the future, 45 actual jobs and five proxy ones. It also includes eight additional sub-indices that represent families of similar jobs. (Click to see more about these jobs). The CJoF Index score represents the sum of the current quarterly total of US job openings divided by the quarterly total of US job openings in the 3rd quarter of 2016 (the base year for the Index). The index was developed by the Cognizant Center for the Future of Work, together with ESI ThoughtLab, an economic research firm.

Introduction

The rapid rise of technology is transforming the future of work in the US. Companies are not only rethinking traditional jobs through a digital lens, but also inventing new jobs that will be important in the future. To track the growth in these future jobs, Cognizant teamed up with ESI ThoughtLab, a leading economic research firm, to create the Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index? (CJoF Index).

This quarterly index measures the change in demand for a set of 50 jobs of the future identified through analysis conducted by the Cognizant Center for the Future of Work and ESI ThoughtLab. ESI ThoughtLab’s senior economists constructed the analytical framework for the index, and Burning Glass, a provider of workforce analytics, provided the current and historical data on job openings.

The CJoF Index score represents the sum of the current quarterly total of US job openings divided by the quarterly total of US job openings in the 3rd quarter of 2016 (the base year for the Index). In addition to the composite score of 50 jobs of the future, the index includes eight additional sub-indices that represent families of similar jobs, including Algorithmic, Automation, and Artificial Intelligence; Customer Experience (CX); Environmental; Fitness and Wellness; Health Care (HC); Legal and Financial Services; Transportation; and Work Culture. The index allows the user to drill down into comparative trends for each of the underlying occupations.

The CJoF Index, which is updated quarterly, offers the user insights into current and historical trends. ESI ThoughtLab economists monitor and periodically update the data as Burning Glass adds or subtracts from its real-time list of occupations.

Index data and composition

The CJoF Index draws on Burning Glass’s highly respected Job Insight portal. Burning Glass obtains its data from online sources of job openings, both aggregators of job openings (sites like Indeed, LinkedIn, and ZipRecruiter, along with many others) and primary sources (company websites). Burning Glass uses an extensive “de-duplication” algorithm to ensure each job opening is counted only once.

Each quarter, ESI ThoughtLab economists input the relevant data on job openings in 50 occupations to create the latest index, aggregating the totals for the full CJoF index and the various sub-indices. All totals are indexed against the 2016 third quarter totals (base quarter) to create the index score for each job, the full CJoF Index, and the various sub-indices.

To ensure these openings represent jobs of the future, the team applies a filter to identify job openings requiring digital capabilities. Due to the use of the digital filter, each of the occupations represented in the Index is a subset of the total number of openings for that specific occupation. The CJoF Index represents about 5% of the total openings tracked by Burning Glass.

The data included in the Index does not measure actual jobs, but rather the number of posted job openings. As such, it serves as a proxy for job demand, and allows the user to better understand the trends and patterns in the labor market and the historical, current, and potential demand for jobs. The data used in the Index is influenced by the availability and prevalence of online job offerings, and the ability of Burning Glass to access those openings and scrub them for duplications. The index measures US domestic job openings and is not designed to directly inform users of potential outsourcing of employment opportunities or shifts of existing staff within companies.

On a regular basis, Burning Glass adjusts the mix of occupations included in its data set, based on changes in the marketplace and job postings. In some cases, occupations may be split, combined, or eliminated. Cognizant and ESI ThoughtLab review the index composition regularly and may make changes and adjustments if needed. This may alter some reported data, as Burning Glass will go back and adjust the totals for previous time periods to reflect the change.

Burning Glass Labor Insight? Real-time Labor Market Information

The index draws its job openings data from Burning Glass Technologies’ Labor Insight? Real-time Labor Market Information tool. Burning Glass was founded in 1999 with the goal of developing the world’s leading technologies for matching people with jobs. Its technologies deliver intuitive insight across a range of functions, including workforce and economic development and career exploration and counseling, as well as job matching. Its pioneering solutions leverage a deep understanding of people and their careers in order to deliver superior workforce and marketplace insight. Burning Glass’s patented artificial intelligence engine learns from actual career patterns as observed in both structured and natural language contexts in order to deliver an intuitive, real-time awareness of how and when people move from job to job and of the kinds of skills and experiences that lead to successful placement.

Selection criteria

We identified the occupations for inclusion in the Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index through a selection process that included quantitative analysis of the Burning Glass data by ESI ThoughtLab, combined with expert opinion from the Cognizant Center for the Future of Work. We selected 45 occupations for inclusion in the CJoF, all representing jobs that the team identified as important for the future US workforce. The selection process included a mix of both objective data analysis and subjective insight based upon an understanding of the emerging job markets by both the Cognizant and ESI Thoughtlab teams.

In addition to the 45 actual occupations, we created five proxy jobs to represent potential new occupations identified in the Center for the Future of Work’s recent publication, 21 Jobs of the Future and 21 More Jobs of the Future. For these proxy jobs, we identified potential occupations for each proxy based upon the Cognizant job description and the current occupations likely to evolve into, or merge with, that new occupation. For each proxy job, Cognizant and ESI ThoughtLab applied weights of either 15%, 35%, or 50% to component occupations to reflect their impact on the proxy job. To avoid double-counting, all the occupations included in the proxy jobs were excluded from the remainder of the Index. The table below specifies each proxy job and its occupation components.

Proxy job

Occupation components

Augmented reality (AR) journey builder

Actor

Choreographer

Copywriter

Art director

Graphic designer / desktop publisher

Set / exhibit designer

Multimedia designer / animator

Cyber calamity forecaster

Web designer

Web developer

Computer programmer

Computer systems engineer / architect

Insurance underwriter

Actuary

Loss prevention/ asset protection specialist

Fitness commitment counselor

Dietary aide

Nutrition / dietetic technician

Dietitian / nutritionist

Fitness / wellness manager

Exercise physiologist / specialist

Health educator / coach

Personal trainer / fitness instructor

Master of edge computing

Mechanical / electrical drafter

Systems analyst

Electrical and electronics technician

Electronics engineer

Telecommunications engineering specialist

Tidewater architect

Conservation scientists / park ranger

Marine engineer / architect

Soil / plant scientist

Wildlife biologist

Environmental compliance specialist

Environmental engineering technician

Landscape architect

Surveying / mapping technician

Environmental planner / scientist

Hydrologist

Water / wastewater engineer

Our team divided the index into eight job families, consisting of groupings of occupations by skills and function (see table below). These groupings allow for comparison of individual jobs to their job families, as well as between and among job families.

Job family

Occupations

Algorithmic, automation, and artificial intelligence

Master of edge computing

Cyber calamity forecaster

Chief information officer / director of information technology

Computer scientist

Technology consultant

Business intelligence architect / developer

Mechatronics engineer

Robotics engineer

Data scientist

Cyber / information security engineer / analyst

Software developer / engineer

Mobile applications developer

Video game designer

Robotics technician

Security / defense intelligence analyst

Surveillance officer / investigator

Customer experience (CX)

AR journey builder

Business development / sales manager

Social media strategist / specialist

UI / UX designer / developer

Fashion designer

Sales engineer

Environmental

Tidewater architect

Alternative energy manager

Sustainability specialist

Solar engineer

Solar installer

Environmental engineer

Fitness and wellness

Fitness commitment counselor

Family / behavioral therapist

Home health aide

Caregiver / personal care aide

Health care (HC)

Biostatistician

Biomedical engineer

Physician

Registered nurse

Health information manager / director

Health technician / technologist (other)

Genetic counselor

Biomedical equipment technician

Legal and financial services

Personal financial advisor

Risk manager / analyst

Attorney

Transportation

Aerospace engineer

Urban / transportation planner

Avionics technician

Transportation supervisor

Work culture

Training and development specialist

Industrial-organizational psychologist

Career counselor

Index team and responsibilities

The Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index was created by The Cognizant Center for the Future of Work in collaboration with ESI ThoughtLab. The Cognizant team included Ben Pring, vice president and Co-founder of the Center and Managing Director, and Rob Brown, assistant vice president. The ESI ThoughtLab team included Lou Celi, chief executive, Dr. Daniel Miles, chief economist, Steve Wray, director of regional economics and labor, and Rebecca DeJoseph, senior economist.

The Cognizant Center for the Future of Work conceived of the index and was responsible for final selection of the occupations included in the index, the design of the proxy jobs, and the identification of the Job Families. Cognizant decides on the occupations included in the index and any future adjustments to the Index.

ESI ThoughtLab is responsible for managing the data and maintaining the analytical platform for the index. ESI ThoughtLab maintains quality control over the index, implements any changes to the index as directed by Cognizant, and provides data analysis to support Cognizant’s thought leadership efforts.

Copyright

? Copyright 2020, Cognizant. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission from Cognizant. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

CJoF Index: First Annual Review

Cognizant’s Jobs of the Future Index, established in October 2018, provides leading indicators for how the U.S. economy is adapting in the face of technology-based innovation and disruption. Since its debut at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Conference in Davos in January 2019, the CJoF Index has established itself as an important new tool for understanding how the Fourth Industrial Revolution is shaping the future of work. Our first annual CJoF Index report details highlights from the first year.

Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index

The Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index

The rapid rise of technology is causing US companies to rethink jobs for the future of work. To benchmark these emerging jobs, we have created the Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index? (CJoF Index). This quarterly index measures the change in demand for a set of 50 jobs of the future, 45 actual jobs and five proxy ones. It also includes eight additional sub-indices that represent families of similar jobs. (Click to see more about these jobs). The CJoF Index score represents the sum of the current quarterly total of US job openings divided by the quarterly total of US job openings in the 3rd quarter of 2016 (the base year for the Index). The index was developed by the Cognizant Center for the Future of Work, together with ESI ThoughtLab, an economic research firm.

Introduction

The rapid rise of technology is transforming the future of work in the US. Companies are not only rethinking traditional jobs through a digital lens, but also inventing new jobs that will be important in the future. To track the growth in these future jobs, Cognizant teamed up with ESI ThoughtLab, a leading economic research firm, to create the Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index? (CJoF Index).

This quarterly index measures the change in demand for a set of 50 jobs of the future identified through analysis conducted by the Cognizant Center for the Future of Work and ESI ThoughtLab. ESI ThoughtLab’s senior economists constructed the analytical framework for the index, and Burning Glass, a provider of workforce analytics, provided the current and historical data on job openings.

The CJoF Index score represents the sum of the current quarterly total of US job openings divided by the quarterly total of US job openings in the 3rd quarter of 2016 (the base year for the Index). In addition to the composite score of 50 jobs of the future, the index includes eight additional sub-indices that represent families of similar jobs, including Algorithmic, Automation, and Artificial Intelligence; Customer Experience (CX); Environmental; Fitness and Wellness; Health Care (HC); Legal and Financial Services; Transportation; and Work Culture. The index allows the user to drill down into comparative trends for each of the underlying occupations.

The CJoF Index, which is updated quarterly, offers the user insights into current and historical trends. ESI ThoughtLab economists monitor and periodically update the data as Burning Glass adds or subtracts from its real-time list of occupations.

Index data and composition

The CJoF Index draws on Burning Glass’s highly respected Job Insight portal. Burning Glass obtains its data from online sources of job openings, both aggregators of job openings (sites like Indeed, LinkedIn, and ZipRecruiter, along with many others) and primary sources (company websites). Burning Glass uses an extensive “de-duplication” algorithm to ensure each job opening is counted only once.

Each quarter, ESI ThoughtLab economists input the relevant data on job openings in 50 occupations to create the latest index, aggregating the totals for the full CJoF index and the various sub-indices. All totals are indexed against the 2016 third quarter totals (base quarter) to create the index score for each job, the full CJoF Index, and the various sub-indices.

To ensure these openings represent jobs of the future, the team applies a filter to identify job openings requiring digital capabilities. Due to the use of the digital filter, each of the occupations represented in the Index is a subset of the total number of openings for that specific occupation. The CJoF Index represents about 5% of the total openings tracked by Burning Glass.

The data included in the Index does not measure actual jobs, but rather the number of posted job openings. As such, it serves as a proxy for job demand, and allows the user to better understand the trends and patterns in the labor market and the historical, current, and potential demand for jobs. The data used in the Index is influenced by the availability and prevalence of online job offerings, and the ability of Burning Glass to access those openings and scrub them for duplications. The index measures US domestic job openings and is not designed to directly inform users of potential outsourcing of employment opportunities or shifts of existing staff within companies.

On a regular basis, Burning Glass adjusts the mix of occupations included in its data set, based on changes in the marketplace and job postings. In some cases, occupations may be split, combined, or eliminated. Cognizant and ESI ThoughtLab review the index composition regularly and may make changes and adjustments if needed. This may alter some reported data, as Burning Glass will go back and adjust the totals for previous time periods to reflect the change.

Burning Glass Labor Insight? Real-time Labor Market Information

The index draws its job openings data from Burning Glass Technologies’ Labor Insight? Real-time Labor Market Information tool. Burning Glass was founded in 1999 with the goal of developing the world’s leading technologies for matching people with jobs. Its technologies deliver intuitive insight across a range of functions, including workforce and economic development and career exploration and counseling, as well as job matching. Its pioneering solutions leverage a deep understanding of people and their careers in order to deliver superior workforce and marketplace insight. Burning Glass’s patented artificial intelligence engine learns from actual career patterns as observed in both structured and natural language contexts in order to deliver an intuitive, real-time awareness of how and when people move from job to job and of the kinds of skills and experiences that lead to successful placement.

Selection criteria

We identified the occupations for inclusion in the Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index through a selection process that included quantitative analysis of the Burning Glass data by ESI ThoughtLab, combined with expert opinion from the Cognizant Center for the Future of Work. We selected 45 occupations for inclusion in the CJoF, all representing jobs that the team identified as important for the future US workforce. The selection process included a mix of both objective data analysis and subjective insight based upon an understanding of the emerging job markets by both the Cognizant and ESI Thoughtlab teams.

In addition to the 45 actual occupations, we created five proxy jobs to represent potential new occupations identified in the Center for the Future of Work’s recent publication, 21 Jobs of the Future and 21 More Jobs of the Future. For these proxy jobs, we identified potential occupations for each proxy based upon the Cognizant job description and the current occupations likely to evolve into, or merge with, that new occupation. For each proxy job, Cognizant and ESI ThoughtLab applied weights of either 15%, 35%, or 50% to component occupations to reflect their impact on the proxy job. To avoid double-counting, all the occupations included in the proxy jobs were excluded from the remainder of the Index. The table below specifies each proxy job and its occupation components.

Proxy job

Occupation components

Augmented reality (AR) journey builder

Actor

Choreographer

Copywriter

Art director

Graphic designer / desktop publisher

Set / exhibit designer

Multimedia designer / animator

Cyber calamity forecaster

Web designer

Web developer

Computer programmer

Computer systems engineer / architect

Insurance underwriter

Actuary

Loss prevention/ asset protection specialist

Fitness commitment counselor

Dietary aide

Nutrition / dietetic technician

Dietitian / nutritionist

Fitness / wellness manager

Exercise physiologist / specialist

Health educator / coach

Personal trainer / fitness instructor

Master of edge computing

Mechanical / electrical drafter

Systems analyst

Electrical and electronics technician

Electronics engineer

Telecommunications engineering specialist

Tidewater architect

Conservation scientists / park ranger

Marine engineer / architect

Soil / plant scientist

Wildlife biologist

Environmental compliance specialist

Environmental engineering technician

Landscape architect

Surveying / mapping technician

Environmental planner / scientist

Hydrologist

Water / wastewater engineer

Our team divided the index into eight job families, consisting of groupings of occupations by skills and function (see table below). These groupings allow for comparison of individual jobs to their job families, as well as between and among job families.

Job family

Occupations

Algorithmic, automation, and artificial intelligence

Master of edge computing

Cyber calamity forecaster

Chief information officer / director of information technology

Computer scientist

Technology consultant

Business intelligence architect / developer

Mechatronics engineer

Robotics engineer

Data scientist

Cyber / information security engineer / analyst

Software developer / engineer

Mobile applications developer

Video game designer

Robotics technician

Security / defense intelligence analyst

Surveillance officer / investigator

Customer experience (CX)

AR journey builder

Business development / sales manager

Social media strategist / specialist

UI / UX designer / developer

Fashion designer

Sales engineer

Environmental

Tidewater architect

Alternative energy manager

Sustainability specialist

Solar engineer

Solar installer

Environmental engineer

Fitness and wellness

Fitness commitment counselor

Family / behavioral therapist

Home health aide

Caregiver / personal care aide

Health care (HC)

Biostatistician

Biomedical engineer

Physician

Registered nurse

Health information manager / director

Health technician / technologist (other)

Genetic counselor

Biomedical equipment technician

Legal and financial services

Personal financial advisor

Risk manager / analyst

Attorney

Transportation

Aerospace engineer

Urban / transportation planner

Avionics technician

Transportation supervisor

Work culture

Training and development specialist

Industrial-organizational psychologist

Career counselor

Index team and responsibilities

The Cognizant Jobs of the Future Index was created by The Cognizant Center for the Future of Work in collaboration with ESI ThoughtLab. The Cognizant team included Ben Pring, vice president and Co-founder of the Center and Managing Director, and Rob Brown, assistant vice president. The ESI ThoughtLab team included Lou Celi, chief executive, Dr. Daniel Miles, chief economist, Steve Wray, director of regional economics and labor, and Rebecca DeJoseph, senior economist.

The Cognizant Center for the Future of Work conceived of the index and was responsible for final selection of the occupations included in the index, the design of the proxy jobs, and the identification of the Job Families. Cognizant decides on the occupations included in the index and any future adjustments to the Index.

ESI ThoughtLab is responsible for managing the data and maintaining the analytical platform for the index. ESI ThoughtLab maintains quality control over the index, implements any changes to the index as directed by Cognizant, and provides data analysis to support Cognizant’s thought leadership efforts.

Copyright

? Copyright 2020, Cognizant. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission from Cognizant. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.